The Making Available Right: Realizing the Potential of Copyright’s Dissemination Function in the Digital Age

This presentation analyses the making available right as introduced by the WIPO Internet Treaties and evaluates judicial approaches to the right in Australia, the US and the EU. It discusses the underlying justifications driving disparate decisions on the right, and reveals the pitfalls of existing approaches. Distilling lessons from current approaches, this presentation proposes principles for the interpretation of the making available right. These principles are aimed at aligning the development of the making available right with the vast communications potential afforded by the Internet.